Reforestation

Fires, logging, farming, squatting and urban development are responsible for the destruction of 40% of Mexico's forests, a government official said Friday. News reports quoted Rafael Hernandez Ochoa, undersecretary of forestry, as saying that a massive reforestation program is necessary to restore Mexico's forests to their previous state.

BUCKHORN MEADOWS, Calif. - Calls for massive salvage logging, restoration and reforestation projects in the 257,000 acres of public wilderness scarred by the Rim fire have ignited controversy over how to proceed with the largest recovery effort undertaken in the Sierra Nevada. "We're hoping to negotiate our way through this, but we need the infrastructure and personnel," said Jerry Snyder, a spokesman for the Stanislaus National Forest. "This effort will be huge, so we'll also need additional help from Washington.

Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday unanimously approved an oak and fir tree reforestation plan for the Sunshine Canyon Landfill expansion, although the future of the expansion itself is in doubt. The supervisors have approved the spread of the trash dump onto 200 acres of wooded canyon above Granada Hills. But opponents are pressing a court case that successfully overturned an earlier approval of the same expansion.

From the start, there were indications that the U.S. Forest Service didn't respond aggressively enough during the 2009 Station fire in the Angeles National Forest. Now there are signs that it moved too aggressively to plant a million seedlings in an attempt at post-fire reforestation. As Times staff writer Louis Sahagun reports, only about a fourth of the pine and fir seedlings have survived so far, less than a third of the hoped-for number. Dry conditions this year would have made things difficult in any event, but many mistakes were surprisingly avoidable: planting in areas that experts now agree are too steep and rocky for tree survival; planting species that either aren't native to the area or weren't growing in those specific areas before; planting at too low an elevation; and planting more trees than typically grow in these areas.

Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation. It would give him hope after a year of disappointment. Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.

The government has approved a $3-billion plan to reforest part of the Amazon basin, officials said Wednesday. The plan, to be funded by Brazilian private industry and foreign contributions, envisages the reforestation of 2.5 million acres over 10 years in the eastern states of Para, Maranhao and Tocantins.

The county of Orange received a $130,000 grant this week that will benefit both small businesses and county parks. The grant will be used to establish an annual reforestation project to replace dead and dying trees in county regional parks, said Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder. The grant was awarded to the county under the Small Business Appropriation Act, which provides funding to state and local governments for purchasing and planting trees on government-owned or -controlled lands.

A new pilot reforestation project in Southern California will help reduce the effects of global warming by removing up to 1,400 tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year, officials said Monday. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the U.S. Forest Service and a local environmental group, TreePeople, marked the start of the project by planting some of the 50,000 seedlings that will dot the Angeles National Forest and other areas by late spring.

On the kitchen table of the Masonic lodge in this mountain village, Jim Asher gently unloaded 20 seedling giant sequoias from a cardboard box he received in the mail a few days ago. They were the first of 30,000 such trees that Asher's Rim of the World Masonic Lodge bought from an Oregon nursery for resale locally as part of an ambitious, and somewhat controversial, effort to reclaim the San Bernardino Mountains' burned and beetle-ravaged forests.

Bulldozers roved the thick woods near Butlerville in the early 1970s, pushing majestic trees into tangled piles. Then tractors rolled across the cleared land, plowing soil for crops and pasture grass. The scene was repeated throughout the Midwest until, in less than a decade, private landowners had cleared trees from millions of acres for the sake of more valuable cattle, corn and soybeans.

Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation. It would give him hope after a year of disappointment. Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.

For centuries, the little-known Ogiek people foraged wild honey and used bows and arrows to hunt gazelles in the Mau Forest of Kenya. But recently, for the second time in 16 years, they were driven from their homes and are now living in makeshift bamboo-and-plastic tents at the side of the road in a valley that long ago was part of the forest. Their plight casts a focus on Kenya's endemic corruption and its potentially catastrophic effect on a small, powerless tribe, and the rest of the nation.

IN the United States, air travel generates as much as 10% of transportation-based emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Center for Climate Change and Environmental Forecasting. A typical flight from Los Angeles to New York, for example, generates 1 ton of carbon dioxide per passenger.

On the kitchen table of the Masonic lodge in this mountain village, Jim Asher gently unloaded 20 seedling giant sequoias from a cardboard box he received in the mail a few days ago. They were the first of 30,000 such trees that Asher's Rim of the World Masonic Lodge bought from an Oregon nursery for resale locally as part of an ambitious, and somewhat controversial, effort to reclaim the San Bernardino Mountains' burned and beetle-ravaged forests.

Racing to beat winter rains, work crews are scrambling to stabilize fire-scarred hillsides along Southern California highways to prevent ash and silt from slopping into storm drains, oozing onto roadways and undermining key commuter routes. Working under emergency orders, the California Department of Transportation has commissioned the erosion control work on hundreds of acres from Simi Valley to San Diego that were burned in the October and early November blazes.

CHINA After decades of logging that left large swaths of the country looking like a desert wasteland, China embarked on a $10-billion, 10-year program to plant 170,000 square miles of trees--an area slightly larger than California. It is the largest reforestation project ever, forestry officials said, suggesting that only an unprecedented effort can stop the chronic droughts and deadly flooding blamed on logging.

From the start, there were indications that the U.S. Forest Service didn't respond aggressively enough during the 2009 Station fire in the Angeles National Forest. Now there are signs that it moved too aggressively to plant a million seedlings in an attempt at post-fire reforestation. As Times staff writer Louis Sahagun reports, only about a fourth of the pine and fir seedlings have survived so far, less than a third of the hoped-for number. Dry conditions this year would have made things difficult in any event, but many mistakes were surprisingly avoidable: planting in areas that experts now agree are too steep and rocky for tree survival; planting species that either aren't native to the area or weren't growing in those specific areas before; planting at too low an elevation; and planting more trees than typically grow in these areas.

In the months ahead, volunteers with shovels, spades and seedlings will fan out across the country as part of an ambitious effort to boost the number of trees planted in America by at least a billion each year. The National Tree Initiative, a $175-million campaign, is intended to reverse--or at least slow--the rapid deforestation of America. So far, the Bush Administration seems pleased with the results.

Hoping to reforest Southern California's ocean floor, the California Coastal Commission on Tuesday approved plans to plant giant kelp off Crystal Cove State Park and Malibu. The Coastal Commission unanimously approved the projects, which will be carried out by Orange CoastKeeper and Santa Monica BayKeeper. "It's going to be a real enhancement and help get some kelp areas that we [historically] had along the coast rebuilt," said Shirley S.

It is, at once, disconcerting and wondrous, the contents of this 35,000-square-foot space. A pair of maples, one lopped in half, with its summer foliage languishing like an abandoned party dress. A half-built magnolia. And in the back, a group of redwoods reaching majestically toward the ceiling's exposed heating and air-conditioning ducts.